Impact

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EDITOR'S NOTE: February 15, 2014 marked one year since Omwa Ombara
arrived in the U.S. to seek political asylum after attempts on her life in
Kenya between May and December 2012. She fled her native land after being
contacted by International Criminal Court (ICC) investigators probing the
violence that followed the Kenyan elections in 2007-2008, in which more than
1,000 people were killed, according to news reports. Ombara
was never a witness, nor did she ever meet any ICC investigators, but the mere
suspicion that she was participating in the ICC process prompted a spate of
threats. She describes her own ordeal and the culture of silence that has
settled over most of the Kenyan media. CPJ's Journalist Assistance program
supported Ombara throughout her ordeal.

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New York, December 20, 2013--The Committee to Protect
Journalists welcomes today's conviction by Moscow's
Lyublinsky court of Russian businessman Pavel Sopot for inciting the 2000 murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Igor Domnikov. The
court sentenced Sopot to a seven-year term in a high-security prison, and ordered
him to pay the journalist's widow 1 million rubles (US$30,317) in compensation.

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New
York, August 9, 2013--The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes Tuesday's
conviction for the 2010 murder of Brazilian radio journalist and blogger
Francisco Gomes de Medeiros. João Francisco dos Santos was sentenced to 27
years in prison on charges of shooting and killing the journalist in the
northeastern city of Caicó, according to news reports.

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New York, July 24, 2013--The Committee to
Protect Journalists welcomes the release on Tuesday of Yemeni freelance
journalist Abdulelah Hider Shaea, who had been
imprisoned for almost three years on anti-state charges.

Shaea was released yesterday after President Abd
Rabbo Mansour Hadi issued a pardon,
which also stipulated that the journalist could not leave Sana'a, the capital,
for two years, state news agency Saba and other news sources reported.

Speaking at a U.N. Security Council discussion about the
protection of journalists, Associated Press Executive Editor and CPJ
Vice Chair Kathleen Carroll remembered the 31 AP journalists who have died
reporting the news and whose names grace the Wall of Honor that visitors pass
as they enter the agency's New York headquarters. Most were killed covering war,
from the Battle of the Little Big Horn to Vietnam to Iraq. But around the
world, Carroll
noted, "most journalists who die today are not caught in some
wartime crossfire, they are murdered just because of what they do. And those
murders are rarely ever solved; the killers rarely ever punished."

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Almost eight years have passed since the murder of Bangladeshi
journalist Gautam Das,
but the slow wheels of justice have finally rotated. Late last month, a court
sentenced nine individuals to life in prison in connection with the scribe's
murder. Many local journalists have hailed the verdict as a landmark, the first
time a Bangladeshi court has successfully prosecuted a murder of a journalist.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A court
in Thailand ruled today that Italian photojournalist Fabio Polenghi was
shot and killed by a bullet fired by a soldier during a government crackdown on
street protesters on May 19, 2010. The inquest ruling established the
circumstances surrounding his death but failed to apportion blame to any
individual military commanders or politicians in power at the time.

Elisabetta Polenghi,
Fabio's sister, indicated after the trial that she will pursue criminal charges
to bring those directly responsible for her brother's death to account. CPJ
Senior Southeast Asia Representative Shawn Crispin was in attendance at today's
verdict and at an evening press conference with Elisabetta Polenghi at the Foreign
Correspondent's Club of Thailand. The following are excerpts of Crispin's
statement at the press conference:

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New York, May 8, 2013--A man who said he
was paid the equivalent of US$250 to kill Philippine radio journalist Gerardo Ortega, left, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the
2011 murder, according to news reports and the victim's family. The Committee
to Protect Journalists today joined with Ortega family in calling for the
arrests of the suspected masterminds.

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Who can say exactly when
the work of press freedom groups, human rights defenders, and budding networks
of Mexican journalists became a movement? It would have been many murders, many
funerals, many orphans ago. It would have been countless news events--about
crime, corruption, violence--that went
uncovered because reporters and news organizations concluded that the
only way to survive was to stay silent. But finally, several years ago, the
work of all these groups began topush
the massacre
of the Mexican press on to the national agenda. On Thursday, the
movement led
to a bill that gives the federal government jurisdiction over crimes
against journalists. Today, the measure awaits only the president's approval.

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Bangkok, April 26, 2013--The Committee to Protect
Journalists welcomes the decision by Thailand's Ministry of Culture to reverse
its earlier imposed ban
on the locally produced documentary Fah
Tam Pan Din Soon (Boundary).

"The ministry's reversal of its censorship order against
director Nontawat Numbchapol's documentary is a step in the right direction,"
said Shawn Crispin, CPJ's senior Southeast Asia representative. "We would
encourage government authorities to reconsider their banning of various other
politically-oriented films, books and websites currently censored."